


Introspection

by isthisagoodname



Category: Warframe
Genre: Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 18:11:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19405519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isthisagoodname/pseuds/isthisagoodname
Summary: Wrote this up in October of last year, right after The Sacrifice update. Just a oneshot for some musings and explorations of ideas I had. Spoilers for content up to and including that quest.





	Introspection

The girl walked through the orbiter, treading past the confines of the small landing craft attached to its fore and deeper into the cavernous belly of machinery and space it supported. 

The sound of feet, _her_ feet, seemed strange, the step of booted sole against the floor. It felt so strange and alien - not being barefoot, not hearing the sharp clash of living metal against the plating, not feeling the cold of it. No, she was clothed and small and simply her, in her own flesh, not in the body of another. She was just herself, just the girl named Jaen.

It had been months since she had discovered the truth and awoke the second time, but still the facts of it unnerved her. She wasn't tall and mute and glorious, she was a lost child, and had been simply dreaming of grander form. 

The bulk of the orbiter was mostly dedicated to storage: great vaults of material, an ever expanding arsenal and armory… and a bank of strange vertical docks, dozens of them by now. They looked smooth and refined, but she knew the wires twitched with thought and tubing beat with living pulse as they held and sustained her true clothes, the warframes that she was so attuned and familiar with. She recalled back to the day she first reconstructed one, a great bulk of a frame, how much this new beast dwarfed him… 

Oh. ‘him.’ She wasn't quite sure exactly what pronoun was the right one. When she first awoke, she was male in form, a strange one with metal skin and sleek muscled build. She looked back to where that body now rested calmly and recalled the thrill of how sparks danced across his hands, _her hands_ , and the feeling of sheer exhilaration that came from racing with lightning swiftness to the next objective. She recalled as she stood before the newly-reforged frame, and listened as their mother told her to choose and believe and see themself as him… and she did and then so she was, a form great and mighty, watching as the lean build of her former body slumped lifeless to the floor. The Lotus sounded so _proud_ of her that day, but it didn't feel like much of anything special at the time as she picked up the body and carried him into storage, following after Ordis’s ever-helpful direction.

Only now did she realize how strange that was. It just seemed entirely normal at the time, came so naturally, and she didn't question it at all. There was some awkwardness after it at first, as it took time to acclimate to the difference of the new form, but soon she had mastered it. The ground quaked beneath her feet and she was huge, _strong_ , a great beast that roared in fury and triumph as bullets simply bounced from her hide and her very step thundered and crashed through time itself. 

It wasn't the first time she had changed, nor was it the last. She walked by the hanging frames and with each she remembered as she was so many different things, blade, force, fury, cold and flame and mind and death and more. Even doubly awakened she gave little care about these myriad shapes and styles she embodied, switching between them at whim. Until… until she met this one that now rested before her. He stirred and his faceless gaze turned to watch her. Umbra was awake, and he reached out a cautious hand to his operator.

She hesitated for a moment but took it. As always, she felt the stark burning horror of that memory. They may have finally accepted it, but it was still there, still every bit as terrible as it first was. She tried to instead focus on other memories, new ones they had forged together. Their most recent was as they had clashed through a tower within the void, dancing with violence and noise as they served to distract the sentry from their unnamed operative. It had sent ever more corrupted to face them, and all were cut down with ease. 

That was a far better memory to experience. She held his hand and smiled as she remembered the ugly twisted visage of that old grineer captain, how she and Umbra drove the blade through his mangled heart even as his voice babbled uselessly on and on. They watched him wither, found satisfaction as his ugly dying eye smoked and rolled with void-madness…

_“Hey kiddo.”_

She tensed and her calm hand-hold suddenly became a vice grip of momentary fear. Umbra tried to look to the source of the trouble, but saw nothing there. Jaen knew what this was, this sudden voice, _her voice_ , and she knew that it was only for her to hear. She let go and Umbra returned to slumber as she turned to walk away, utterly determined to refuse to acknowledge this presence’s existence.

“You're trying to ignore me now?” She heard boots echoing across the floor as it hurried over to her side, matching exactly to her pace.

A pit of dread welled up within her gut. It normally didn't follow her like this, was usually content to simply make its presence known. Some part of her knew that she couldn't evade it this time, so she stopped on her heel and turned to see it. Her own face gazed impassively back at her even as she glared. “What do you want?!”

It shrugged with her shoulders. “You seem to have something on your mind.” 

“Yeah, you.” It was a pithy, stupid attempt at a comeback, but it was all she had right now. If she didn't know better about this being, she would have thought she saw the faint twitch of a smirk. “Something besides me.” It turned it's gaze back down the corridor they had walked down and the resting frames within. “Is it them?”

Jaen sighed. She had just been reminiscing about them, after all, and something had to have compelled her to wander here. “I guess so. I've been thinking about them, wondering…”

It finished her thought. “If they're all like him. Like you, Dax.” 

She felt a knot at the pit of her gut. Yes, she was a Dax, so loyal and honored. Issah was so proud of her… “Y-yeah. Umbra showed me, forced me to hear, but the others... I think I just wasn't listening to them before.”

The thing stared at her, unblinking. “What do they tell you?”

She paced and bit at her lip, struggling to find a way to explain. “It isn't words, it's not thoughts, I just…” she sighed. This all felt stupid and childish and she was trying to converse with this void thing for some desperate and insane reason. It watched her worry, then reached out a hand to lift her chin and meet their gazes. Jaen felt a strange lurch in her gut at the act, so reminiscent of a caring touch from her false mother, but carried out by this frigid nothingness. She remembered Margulius’s kindly smile, but the Indifference only gazed and watched. It spoke to her, simply and without emotion. “Go on.”

Her face was burning, and it was only when her vision swam that she realized that she was crying. That was it, really, the whole reason she had come here. 

“I _feel_. I have feelings that don't make any sense to have; it's them or I'm…” She was standing here, speaking to the entity only Tenno could see, nearly her guts out to an apathetic nothingness. “I'm losing my mind.”

The thing's hand fell away and it gave her a brief look over. “Maybe. Maybe you’re just being emotional. Which one do you really think it is?”

Jaen sniffled and tried to gather herself, choked back a quiet sob. “I'm sad…”

“That's what it looks like.” 

“No, I mean… I feel like I want to cry when I look at the Unum. Or I see that tree in the relay, or... I tried to haggle with Baro, that fucking jackass _Baro_ and I wanted to hug him. I saw a flower in the sludge and I felt _proud_ of it. A stupid flower!”

“Sounds like you care about those things.”

“But I don't! A-and when a I saw Lockjaw in the Index, I… I felt so hurt, so _angry,_ I wanted to scream and break it, t-tear it apart…”

“That's what your puppet does…”

“I was _Mesa!_ I don't, she doesn't feel that way! B-but my hands, I couldn't aim with them…” They were even shaking that way now. She clenched them up into fists, sighed and then released them, staring down in bewilderment at how small and soft they seemed. “I haven't even used Valkyr in ages.”

“But that was her.” It wasn't a question, but a statement of fact.

“How? How could it even be?”

It shrugged and cocked its head quizzically. “How is your son?”

That hit like a punch to the gut, one that had her glare and growl in retaliation. “You already know.”

“How is your mentor?”

“Teshin?”

“No, the archivist…”

“Suda?” Jaen was surprised, and suddenly confused. “She hates me…” She had sided with opposing syndicates, regularly came into conflict with the cephalon, but for some reason felt far less than sure of it. “I-I think?”

“She is ill.”

She paused, stricken by the oddness. She knew that, but why did that feel upsetting to hear? Jaen barely ever interacted with cryptic hologram, but… it hit her like a lightning bolt. “Octavia cares.”

“So it seems. And you?”

“I… I do too.” She sighed, trying to come to terms with the revelation. “They don't remember, don't think, but still feel… still have their personalities.”

“But they're you....” 

“No… I'm them.”

The entity did the strangest thing at that. It laughed, just a small chuckle, but it was a display of emotion nonetheless. “So you are, kiddo.”

Jaen didn't feel any more relaxed by that, but did feel somewhat better, somehow. It was as though some crack in a wall had formed, an infinitesimally tiny break to the inhuman facade of the entity. She looked at it, daring to try and peer into into those empty boundless eyes and try to glean insight from them. “Why are you here?”

It looked away, back to being as cold and impassive as before. “I had something on my mind.”

Jaen blinked, and it was no longer there. Like with all the other times, she questioned whether it ever was at all, or just some figment of her imagination. She looked around, but of course there was nobody there; just her and her sleeping warframes.

“Operator?” Ordis chirped in. Ah… and him. She sighed and ran an anxious hand across 

her scalp before answering. “Yeah?” 

He spoke softly, sounding wary and worried. “Who were you talking to?”

She didn't like hearing that tone from him. He only sounded like that when things were bad, really bad. “Nobody, just… just myself.” She sighed, then quickly cut him off before he could try to pry any further. “Hey, any new advances on the Europan front? We're running out of fieldrons again…”

Ordis sputtered and chimed in excitement, eagerly rattling off the news as she made her way back to navigation, smiling as she left the various worries behind.


End file.
